We've all seen a number of disagreements and disconnects within and between the various progressive grassroots groups. In looking at collaborative communities in general, Virginia's animal rights activists emerge as having been successful in putting together an extremely efficient and focused grassroots network. One source of their effectiveness lies in having a concrete, narrow and well-defined mission. Another source of their success is their passion. Infighting arises more frequently from issues of implementation rather than ideological priorities. Bottom line, no one is for more animal suffering, and the absence of controversy at that level makes this a good group to look at more carefully.As with any area of interest, the extremists and high drama dominate the news, but the substantive work is on the quieter side. We're not animal activists, but we do live with a few former pound animals. As the result of an adoption from Fluvanna around five years ago, I wound up on the email list of a Charlottesville area volunteer. That list is my primary exposure to this community, otherwise, they would seem nearly a parallel universe. I don't even read every single one of the emails, but have learned a little bit. And yes, I've been very tempted to run off to this place or that to take in yet another dog.
That's the first point. In my experience, the animal volunteers recognized and effectively employed email and other forms of electronic communication as work tools well ahead of groups in other grassroots areas, including the political domain. Emphasize work tools as opposed to vehicles for debate, self-expression or name recognition.
The work includes the day-to-day necessities of acquiring food and shelter for animals in need, transportation, political advocacy, public education, fundraisers and crisis management. They are networked across the state and across the country, especially when it comes to rescue organizations for particular breeds. The parallels to political campaigning are obvious, but there's little cyclical let up.
Recently Franklin County has been making the news because of its county animal shelter. Thanks to VDACS the Annual Reports from Pounds and Shelters is online. Though much is left to be done, the philanthropy and hard work over many years on the part of a dedicated activist community has resulted in significant progress in alleviating and preventing the suffering of abandoned and abused animals. They are not "done," but they have been quite successful.
Erin Silks in Fairfax maintains a blog on rural shelters. Rural areas obviously don't have the base for adoption found in urban areas, and it is highly unlikely to find a lost hunting dog in the middle of Richmond. Consequently, the euthanasia (PTS) rates in rural areas tend to be extremely high. Here are the rates for the county shelters in the 5th congressional district.
There don't appear to be any municipal pounds for Albemarle and Charlottesville. The advocacy in the area is unusually high, and it appears that humane societies and other nongovernmental agencies provide the services in that area. The high placement rates spill over into Fluvanna and to a lesser degree to Nelson. I inadvertently omitted Greene County. Their intake for 2005 was 628 with a low PTS rate of .20. 173 were transferred. That would put them somewhere between Fluvanna and Nelson on the chart, again probably a function of their proximity to Charlottesville. I'm too lazy to redo all the charts, but that will take the 5th CD totals down from 80% to 78%, and the total from 19608 to 20237.
In comparing the PTS rates of these counties as a group with other aggregated data, we get the chart below. The cities of Bedford and Martinsville transfer all of their intakes, either to private agencies or to counties and are not included. It appears that an animal can easily be counted several times. If they start out at one shelter, and are then transferred to another, they would be counted twice.
Several regressions showed little or no correlation. One might expect high intake volume to be correlated with high PTS rates, but that is not the case in the counties in the 5th CD. Nor does PTS correlate with transferral rates or median income in these counties. More patterns may emerge for the entire state, but here are the intakes for the 5th.
The "other" category indicates returned to owner, adopted, died in shelter, etc.
A Success Story in Brief
Very quickly Page County went from this to a new shelter. These events were chronicled in the email list mentioned, and some official details may be ferreted out of the BOS minutes, with this decision to announce the opening of the new shelter.
Comparisons
Lowell has a diary up about national v. state level blogs, and one approach to questions like that is to view it from a different perspective. From a distance it's not so hard to see that many of the problems, solutions and even motivation within the animal rights activist domain do not scale up or down.
I use scale in a mathematical sense more than a business sense, so the meaning here is that the different levels are not similar. I'm not as much disagreeing with Lowell or Greg (good comment, Greg), but the question I ask is "what is the function of national and state blogs." I think they are different. Some crucial national level functions in animal activism are
--in the area of crisis prevention, keep the communications open on "Do Not Adopt" lists (the stories in this area are horrendous)
-- put together and share ideology based language and philosophy that have been proven to be effective
-- share strategies and stories about successes and failures
-- network breed rescuers and devotees
As with blogs, the national level is more about communicating information than community building. Theory boils down to little more than compassion, commitment and a healthy dose of common sense. There's very little idle chatter or self-congratulation on the list I mentioned on any level. An unusually high proportion of women are involved in this work. Already we're talking apples and oranges, but it could be interesting to look at a collaborative community that has a more balanced gender mix.
The state and local layers also share information, but the nature of that information is less abstract. The local newspaper here interviewed the owner of a horse was shot in the hindquarters, hardly national news. But we do have some hunting legislation on the table. The local groups are all about getting things done and their functions are a list too long to itemize.
There's a little hardening against the national blogs, and that's not a good idea. In rare situations in the political arena, the massive collective brainpower that blogs like DK bring to bear on certain problems can't be touched by a state level blog. Though there was some duplication, a number of person-years was invested in the space of 24 hours to explore the meaning of macacca. Another place where state level blogs cannot compete is in high volume data scraping. Fundraising and GOTV are other pointed areas where large numbers give an advantage.
The grassroots animal activists are motivated by their own eyewitness experiences, and they are often rewarded by seeing the positive results of their work first hand. The network structure is unusually flat. Many of the political hierarchies are transient and task-oriented as opposed to the role-oriented mentality commonly found in political communities and networks.
In contrast a task-oriented progressive person may be motivated by a personal experience to work for change, but loses interest in working for something as fuzzy as "building support" or "maintaining the base." This personality sees little point in committee meetings, but may gladly knock on doors or work the polls. Maybe some would argue that this takes the politics out of politics, but the alternative is that they are not involved at all.
The NOVA - ROVA functional and cultural differences are addressed with a realistic assessment and plans that accommodate those differences. If name-calling is going on, I haven't seen it, but as just one example animal activists work together across those familiar boundaries to develop transfer arrangements and a very effective transportation pipeline.
If anyone is more interested in this, Page County is a good case study. What I remember though is a particularly ugly old boxer I saw at Fluvanna when picking up my dog. I assumed that he was unadoptable, but found out later that even that dog found a home with an older gentleman whose own ugly old boxer had just died.
How do those groups look from the inside? I have no idea. I don't know what sort of strategic planning they do, if any. But I see their successes. Easy to read and free online, a good read is Thinking Strategically, A Primer on Long-Range Strategic Planning for Grassroots Peace and Justice Organizations (Randall Kehler, Andrea Ayvazian and Ben Senturia)
The reason we have chosen to focus on the local level is because that most of us have the greatest opportunity for hands-on participation and impact.
Applicable perhaps to animal activism and blogs -
Still another myth is that local groups cannot possibly devise effective long-range strategies on their own. Local groups can only carry out strategy that has been devised by national organizations. Assuming this to be true, we fear that any strategies we come up with locally are sure to be "out of sync" with what is going on nationally.
No tidy summary here -but I will say this much. From looking at other communities, it appears that Democrats are at a huge advantage because of cultural reasons.
Below are the data that led to the charts. If this were a real paper, I'd have to go back and put in Greene County. Anyone motivated enough to pull out the remaining data, would end up with an interesting map at the very least and perhaps some useful analysis.
Ghandi said something about the greatness of a nation is in how they treat their children and animals.
The next Comedy Relief will be for animals barring some unforeseen event. They announced it in the most recent fund raiser which was for Katrina.
We're mourning our 14 year old Akita, Kodi who passed a couple of months ago, pretty old for a big dog. Bonnie and I have been to the Humane Society twice, but I couldn't go for another dog so soon after Kodi died. I feel like I'm being unfaithful to my former best friend, but reading here about the need and all the issues involved, I realize it's not all about me and my broken heart.
There's an older Akita Shepherd mix at the pound named Hugo. I've walked him both times I was over there. He's too old and a former stray, so he's probably not gonna get adopted unless we do it. He's a beauty, if a bit long in the tooth.
Hell, I'm no pup myself, but Bonnie took me in when I was well past my prime.
Thanks for writing this article. Very timely for those of us on Tyler Park Drive.
Nick
So good luck with whatever you do - Hugo or some other lucky animal.
My first saluki would bound through the wheat fields down in Goochland - each leap was like 20 feet. And on the flat she was un-be-lie-va-ble.
... I miss them, but I'm sticking to the mutts for awhile... they are sweeter. We have two "working" cats, martha. Mice and squirrels have caused us some expensive damage. They built a nest in my car engine and ate a bunch of hoses underneath that cost about $700 to repair. They also built a nest of insulation in the heat pump fan and we had to have that replaced, too.
The facts and figures presented here are almost overwhelming. When you stop and think that the only reason older animals are not adopted more often is perhaps only because of OUR fear of losing them too soon, it certainly changes the dynamic.
The underlying message of this diary also shines through.
There are many many groups of extremely divergent peoples out there who do manage to work together every day towards their shared common goals. This is a hard learned lesson, but one we all must take to heart if we are to be successful.
There are always going to be opposite ends convinced they know best, but finding common ground, although often difficult, is never impossible if you really, honestly, commit towards finding it.
This past election has given me hope that as Democrats and as Americans we have now begun again to commit to this goal.
Adopt a Rebuplican!